"Warning: shots will be fired during tonight's performance." Oh no. Must they be? Can't I persuade you to reconsider? If there's one thing I like even less than shots being fired during tonight's performance, it's the nervous anticipation of shots being fired during tonight's performance. Like many a victim of hand-held weaponry before me, I put my hands up: I am scared of gunfire in the theatre. Being shot, to my mind, could scarcely be more painful.
Is it just me? We should be able to identify each other easily, we fake-gun-phobes. I'm the one wriggling in discomfort, my fingers poised over my ears, eyes glued to the waggling gun-shaped prop, willing it not to go off – or to bloody well go off now and get things over with. It's happened repeatedly in the last fortnight. (Gun crime-wise, Britain's theatres make South Central LA look like Henley-on-Thames.) At Mamet's Prairie du Chien at the Arcola, a gunshot warning at the auditorium entrance had me on edge throughout. When the shot was fired out of the blue, I all but went through the roof. (It's unexpected loud noises I can't stand; bursting balloons and champagne corks have a similar effect. Pathetic, isn't it?)
Guns fired in Little Eagles at Hampstead; guns fired in Uncle Vanya, also at the Arcola. There Vanya was, swinging his shotgun hither and yon, out to avenge some property-related slight; and in the audience, I cowered and winced. This particular episode is at least mercifully brief. Theatre-makers aren't always so delicate. I've seen dozens of productions that derive the lion's share of their drama from a brandished pistol. Sometimes, it's justified. Often – and this is usually in sub-Tarantino tough-guy capers – it's instant, unearned tension; a way for everyone involved to feel like Joe Pesci without doing the spadework.
If you're cursed with my phobia, it can compromise your evening. Screeds of dialogue have passed me by over the years, as I've sat with fingers in lugs, anticipating gunfire. That's not irrational. If there's a gun being toted in one's vicinity, one seldom focuses elsewhere. And to be nervous of guns is a survival instinct, right? Just ask the actor David Birrell, accidentally shot in the eye with a fake pistol during a performance last year of Sondheim's Passion at the Donmar. Guns – even stage ones – are dangerous things.
But it's not the danger that bothers me, it's the ear-splitting, heart-juddering pop. In a real-life held-at-gunpoint scenario, I reckon I'd be fine – given that, if the bullet was fired, either death or extreme pain would presumably take my mind off the noise. But at the theatre, where there's no such consolation, I'm happiest when I get less bang for my buck.
